Cícero Moraes is adding new portraits to the human family album. The 3-D designer based in Sinop, Brazil, has digitally reconstructed the faces of over 15 extinct hominid species, including Paranthropus boisei, a distant cousin to modern humans. The faces are on display at the University of Padua in Italy (see "...

One bust depicts a gaunt-faced man with a beaked nose and angular chin. Nearby, another has rounded cheeks and a softer nose and chin. But the two faces were both created based on the skull of one man, St. Anthony of Padua.

The gaunt face, a reconstruction made 20 years ago, is closer to how St. Anthony appears in religious artwork. The...

A new experiment using particles of light shows that identifying a simple association between two variables is sufficient to determine whether one influences the other. This process to determine causality, described March 23 in Nature Physics, is surprisingly simple. In...

In the near vacuum of outer space, each rare morsel of matter tells a story. A speedy proton may have been propelled by the shock wave of an exploding star. A stray electron may have teetered on the precipice of a black hole, only to be flung away in a powerful jet of searing gas.

Since 2011, the International Space Station has housed an experiment that aims to decipher those origin...

Most of us think ants are unsanitary; it certainly seems that way when they’ve invaded our homes. But scientists have spotted ant behaviors that show that the insects are cleaner than you might think. Some ant species are known to form “kitchen middens” outside their nests, full of waste and fecal material. And in some species of...

In the fickle world of sports nutrition fads, few trends have shown the staying power of antioxidants. For more than three decades, athletes have remained devoted fans of supplements; the American College of Sports Medicine estimates that around half of elite athletes take vitamins in hopes of keeping...

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Record-setting droughts are in the forecast for the central and southwestern United States, a new study comparing past and predicted drought conditions shows.

Researchers from New York compared drought predictions for the second half of the 21st century with reconstructions of drought conditions dating back to the 11th century and found that the Central Plains and...

Darwin’s finches are once again making scientists rethink evolutionary history. A genetic analysis of the finches reveals three new species. And the birds’ most iconic adaptation, beak shape, is largely controlled by a single gene, researchers report February 11 in Nature. That gene is also known to shape faces in mammals, including...

Observations of sharply rising high-elevation temperatures in the western United States were caused by faulty equipment, not climate change, new research suggests.

From 1991 to 2012, the National Water and Climate Center’s Snow Telemetry network, or SNOTEL, reported a 1.16 degree Celsius per decade climb in minimum temperatures at high elevations throughout the mountainous American West...